al instinct for self-preservation is intense: we cannot help but snatch our hand from the fire or flinch from an attack or abyss. Reverence for life is a powerful morality; medicine cherishes even the frailest. And remember that until 1961 in England and Wales you could still be prosecuted for attempted “self-murder”: the last jailing was 1959.
The actual moment of taking your life remains deeply personal: the subject’s mind has moved to areas incomprehensible to most of us. Having lost an adult son this way I have probably had more conversations with survivors of this catastrophe than most, and seen the struggle to understand, the acceptance that we can’t, and the determination not to become collateral damage. And not — this is vital — ever to allow our lost one to become some sick, romantic “Young Werther” example.
Moreover, threatening suicide as a ploy is a particularly low form of blackmail. Spurned lovers sometimes deploy it, but “if you leave me I’ll kill myself” is a despicable (and probably wholly inaccurate) threat. It is useful to talk openly about mental health, and maybe admit to that psychiatric weasel-phrase “suicidal ideation” (not unusual, we all do it sometimes, recognising it as a mental escape-valve with no real intention). But talking about that ideation should always frame it as something to be defeated. Threatening it is deeply wrong.
So it is infinitely more unforgivable to threaten it by proxy against strangers with young children who get nervous about burgeoning womanhood or manhood, or flinch at silly social expectations to be a fighting superhero or a hot Disney princess. How dare campaigners with a bossy cultural (or pharmaceutical) agenda throw about false statistics threatening the worst of all parental nightmares?
Have any of those spreading these despicable lies about suicide risk ever apologised? Sadly that's not the way it works with ideologues. Jolyon Maugham is now taking a break to go walking in the mountains for a fortnight. To reconsider? I very much doubt it.
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